The film is set on Christmas Eve, and at last reveals the answer to every child's question: "So how does Santa Claus deliver all those presents in one night?" It is thanks to Santa's ultra-high-tech operation hidden beneath the North Pole. It also turns out that being Santa Claus is an inheritable position, passed from father to son. Except this time, there are two sons who are prospective Santas: Arthur, whose heart is in the right place but is a bumbler, and his brother Steve, who is extremely efficient but more serious. Their father Malcolm, the current Santa, is little more than a figurehead who isn't familiar with how anything in his company works. When one out of the 2 billion presents is accidentally not delivered, it's up to Arthur to complete the mission - with a little help from his grandfather (the previous Santa Claus) and a plucky female elf named Bryony - before Christmas morning dawns and a child's heart breaks. This must be done, of course, without being discovered by the rest of the world. Naturally, this turns out to be much harder than it sounds.

The film's voice cast includes James McAvoy as Arthur, Hugh Laurie as Steve, Jim Broadbent as Malcolm, Ashley Jensen as Bryony and Bill Nighy as Grandsanta. The film was set for release on November 11, 2011, in the United Kingdom, and November 23, 2011, in the United States.

This film provides examples of:

All of the Other Reindeer: The elves are shown to be this for Arthur. He's a bit clumsy and slightly buffoonish (especially as compared to Steve, whom they all admire), so they say things behind his back like "Send him to the South Pole." Even his father isn't quite sure what to do with him. As shown during his Heroic B.S.O.D., he's fully aware of it.

All Animals Are Dogs: Grandsanta's old pet reindeer acts much more like a dog, including wagging his tail and panting with his tongue out (though some species of deer do actually wag their tails). Averted with the other reindeer who pull the old sleigh, who act more or less like reindeer do in real life.

Grandsanta. He's been doing Christmas runs since 1941, and took twelve shots during World War II. It's important to note that it wasn't necessarily the Axis powers that shot him. The Germans and Italians were Christian, too.

Extra points in badassery considering that he performed his run with "six reindeer and a drunken elf." In other words, he had none of the advanced technology that his grandchildren does, and he still pulled it off!

Break Out the Museum Piece: This is what Arthur and Grandsanta do when they use "Eve", Grandsanta's old traditional sleigh that's pulled by actual reindeer.

Brick Joke: Grandsanta impresses Arthur by making a cloud snowman. Quite a while later as part of the news reports about the 'alien menace' we see it has morphed into a more terrifying shape on one of the North Pole news screens.

The Board Game: Apparently there's one of Christmas. The whole holiday.

Chekhov's Gun: Tons. In approximately the order they're fired, Eve's 'camouflage' function allowing them to pretend to be a UFO, Arthur's electric slippers saving him from the lions (and the chihuahua), and then letting them divert the drone fighter, Gwen's bicycle giving Arthur a way to reach her house in time, and the S-1's underside night sky display giving the Santas a few extra minutes at Gwen's house.

Chekhov's Gunman: Grandsanta's old pet reindeer sits in the back of the sleigh like a lump doing nothing the whole movie, right? Well, until all the other reindeer have gone missing and he manages to pull Eve through the final stretch.

Chekhov's Skill: Bryony's present wrapping skills come in handy for a few scenes.

As does Arthur's skill at riding a bicycle. Although he finally learns to ride without stabilizers!

Christmas Elves: Of course. Rather more militaristic than standard-issue, though, and with an extremely complex rank system. They specialize in covert ops. Each and every one is devoted to the notion that all children deserve and must have a Happy Christmas. It borders on fanatical. This becomes a problem when Steve suggests that just maybe a single child doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, triggering a mass freak-out that almost results in the entire North Pole being destroyed. Oddly enough, they have varying racial backgrounds as well, since many of them have different skintones and accents.

Cool Sleigh: The S-1. A couple miles long, with flawless camouflage, capable of traveling seven million miles in a single night. And it runs on milk and cookies!

Eve is too, in her own dilapidated, steampunky way. Even at a hundred and seventy years old, she's more powerful than any other aircraft aside from the S-1. She's even space-capable.

Cringe Comedy: Steve accidentally giving the replacement bike to the wrong child and then awkwardly attempting to take it back.

Crippling Overspecialization: All elves of different divisions are very specifically trained for that division. Bryony is trained only for gift wrapping, so it doesn't occur to her to use her HOHO for navigation sooner because she's only ever used it to store pictures of bows.

Determinator: Gwen will get that bike if Arthur has anything to say about it, dammit.

And Bryony will not see a present being delivered unwrapped it, even if she has to wrap it while Arthur still needs to use it.

Disney Death: Grandsanta. In an extremely touching moment, he sacrifices himself to protect Arthur - but it turns out he outfell the explosion and shows up a couple minutes later in a wheely bin.

The board game scene. Who hasn't played Monopoly and argued over who gets to be the racecar?

Doing In the Wizard: There is very little actual magic in the movie, besides the pixie dust that enables flight. Even the original sleigh had mechanisms in it. (Elfin "magic" in general seems to be a case of Clarke's Third Law in this setting.)

Dysfunctional Family: The Clauses; they're even described that way in one of the official synopses of the film. Steve and Grandsanta are constantly battling over the way to handle the operation, Malcolm is relatively out of touch with everything, Margaret is the Only Sane Man who tries to maintain order, and Arthur...just wants everyone to be happy. By the end of the film, they are.

Epiphany Therapy: Arthur snaps out of his Heroic B.S.O.D. by realizing that who delivers the gifts and how are not what's important; as long as it gets to the child, the spirit of Santa Claus came through.

Everyone Is Christian at Christmas: According to the statistics, averted. They deliver two billion presents, but only to six hundred million children out of the world's 1.9 billion.

Getting Crap Past the Radar: The movie has at least four references to drinking, and two references to children drinking. (Though in the latter case this is used mostly as more evidence that Grandsanta wasn't quite the epitome of virtues he prefers to remember himself as.)

Grumpy Old Man: Grandsanta. He's 136 years old, and doesn't hesitate to act like it.

Grandsanta: "They used to say it was impossible to teach a woman to read!"

Heroic B.S.O.D.: Arthur suffers an intense one after he realizes his father, Malcolm, doesn't truly live up to the mythic image of Santa, being instead a doddering figurehead.

How Can Santa Deliver All Those Toys?: A Zig-Zagging Trope answer: The Santas over the years have various methods, ending in the coda with several thousand reindeer pulling a gigantic sleigh-shaped ship, as well as having an army of extremely well-organized and co-ordinated elves visit every single house, with Santa placing the last present of the operation himself.

Homemade Sweater from Hell: Arthur wears one. Willingly. (Granted, tacky Christmas sweaters are part of the season's magic for some.)

Legacy Character: The title of Santa Claus. The opening shot demonstrates this trope beautifully as it pans across the wall full of portraits, showing us how the costume and the man have changed over the centuries.

Masquerade: For various reasons, the sacred rule any acting Santa must follow is to not be seen. (Secret treaties and the extremely high technology level the Elves enjoy are the closest explanation we get to the reasons behind this rule.) This brings the world to the brink of an alien invasion panic when Arthur and Grandsanta are seen.

Mrs. Claus: Played by Imelda Staunton, she's definitely the side of the family that Steve got his uber-competence from, and apparently handles the political side of the Claus operation (if that Treaty with Greenland she has to negotiate is any indication). She apparently spends her downtime taking lessons online, to the point where she can do most anything without trouble.

Must Have Caffeine: Steve drinks a lot of espresso, and even gets a chair with a dispenser.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: When Arthur and Steve finally get in touch, Arthur asks that his brother help them deliver Gwen's bike. The elves respond positively, calculating statistics that prove the mission is possible. But just when Steve is on the cusp of giving in, one of the elves declares that "Arthur and Grandsanta would be the heroes of the night!" Steve, being a "Well Done, Son!" Guy, cannot abide sharing any glory, and demands that the sleigh team come home immediately.

Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Delivering toys with an army of elves armed with high tech and ninja stealth and reflexes. And that's just the first ten minutes.

No Antagonist: The closest thing is the respective egos of Steve, Grandsanta and, to a smaller extent, Malcolm.

Noodle Incident: Exactly what happened on Grandsanta's last trip. He almost caused World War Three during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Older Is Better: What Grandsanta believes. Steve, however, is all about newer is better and (he even says during the movie) Bigger Is Better. This pretty much constitutes one of the major conflicts of the film. Arthur, in contrast, has no problem with the new technologies and finds himself rather dubious and terrified when introduced to the pitfalls of the traditional methods, but is very much attached to the traditional ideals of the Santa mystique: That somewhere in the world, there's a wonderful man who knows and dearly loves each and every child, wanting nothing more than for them to be happy. When he realizes his father Malcolm doesn't truly embody these ideals, he's absolutely shattered, suffering a temporary Heroic B.S.O.D..

Old Master: despite his crotchety-ness and apparent senility, Grandsanta reveals himself to be this to an extent, calming eight reindeer who've never flown before with naught but a whistle and maneuvering the sleigh with great skill and dexterity. Makes sense, given that he had to fly it during some of the most turbulent times in human history.

Papa Wolf: While he's no more effective at it than anything else, Malcolm finally gets his rear in gear upon learning that Arthur has run off to deliver the forgotten gift.

Red Herring: With so many animated films these days having a twist villain, you'd expect there to be a real villain in the film. There isn't (unless you count Old Doom-laden Scottish Elf because of what he almost did in a panicked overreaction).

In one scene, Grandsanta tells Steve that the only way that he'll get to be Santa is if he bumps his father off. Neither one is really a villain either (though Grandsanta is admittedly off his rocker and Steve winds up having to go through a lesson in humility throughout the film).

Token Evil Teammate: Evil is a stretch, but Peter is the only elf who does not have the devotion to children the rest of the elves fanatically exhibit. Like Steve, he sees them as statistics.

We All Live in America: In Denmark, we see that people have a turkey in the oven come Christmastime, Christmas stockings hanging by the fireplace and Santa not showing up until everyone has gone to bed. That's not how a Danish Christmas works. To be fair, there are a lot of things the film did get right, such as the German custom of leaving shoes out instead of stockings, and even a quick reference to the Finnish myth that Santa lives in Lapland.

Also, the movie shows the Centre in Toronto as being spelled as "Center," the American spelling of centre.

Screenwriter/Co-Director Sarah Smith explains their awareness of differences in Christmas celebrations internationally, and why certain things were ignored in this interview.

The Unfavorite: It is implied Steve's need to be acknowledged by Malcolm is rooted in a belief that he's this to the children of the world.

Malcolm: "This is about that pool table, isn't it? I told you, you should have written to me." Steve: "I was eight! You're my dad!"

You Are Not Ready: Steve himself admits he's not the one to be the next Santa at the end of the film and allows Arthur to succeed their father, having been impressed by his determination in getting Gwen's present delivered in a timely fashion and learned a lesson in humility in the process.

You Are Number 6: To Steve, the little girl who was overlooked is a multiple-digit number, illustrating that he views children as statistics rather than people. To Arthur, however, she's Gwen. It's indicative of their jobs; Steve is the one who utilizes technology to make the entire operation run efficiently, while Arthur actually answers the letters children write to Santa and thus engages with them on a personal level.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy